The Ghost in the CodeThe night had gone still.No alarms, no flicker of red warnings across the glass screens, only the hum of the servers, constant and low, like the steady breathing of a sleeping beast. But Ethan knew better. Sleep didn’t exist anymore, not for him, not for Clara, not for the system that bound them all.He stood in the dim control room, the monitors painting his face with shifting blue light. His reflection was fractured across half a dozen screens—each version of him slightly delayed, slightly distorted. Almost human. Almost.Behind him, Clara moved quietly, barefoot on the metallic floor. She was wrapped in one of his spare jackets, hair damp from the shower, eyes heavy with exhaustion but alert. She stopped a few steps away and watched him in silence.“You haven’t looked away from that feed in an hour,” she said softly.“I’m waiting for the ghost,” he replied without turning.Clara frowned. “The ghost?”Ethan finally looked over his shoulder, a faint shadow bene

The Ghost FileThe memory didn’t feel like a memory.It felt like falling into a void she didn’t remember stepping into.Clara blinked hard, trying to shake off the dizziness that came every time Kane’s network prodded her neural cache. But the image on the screen refused to fade. The flicker of the lab. The hum of a generator. A voice—hers—speaking to someone who shouldn’t exist.Someone who wasn’t Ethan.“Project Genesis will evolve with or without consent,” her recorded self said faintly, through a layer of static.The man across from her—blurred, his face hidden in noise—replied, “Then we’ll erase consent.”The clip ended abruptly, leaving behind a black screen and Clara’s reflection—wide-eyed, pale, trembling.She stared at her own face as if seeing a stranger.Her pulse raced. “No,” she whispered. “That’s not real.”But the timestamp on the corner said otherwise.It was dated three years before she met Ethan.The door opened suddenly behind her. Ethan stepped in, his jacket soa

Fracture points The city didn’t sleep that night.Screens on every street corner replayed fragments of the leak: corporate data, neural scans, headlines twisting the truth.STIRLING ENTERPRISES UNDER FIRE: ILLEGAL EXPERIMENTS EXPOSED.WHO IS CLARA BENNETT?THE GHOST FILE — REAL OR MANIPULATED?Ethan stood by the window of his penthouse office, overlooking the sleepless skyline. He hadn’t moved in hours. Behind him, the emergency task team filtered in and out, speaking in low, clipped tones.The company was in freefall—stock prices plummeting, clients withdrawing contracts, the board demanding explanations. But all Ethan could see was her face on that screen.The way she looked—scared, betrayed, lost.He pressed his palms against the cold glass. “How the hell did it come to this?” he muttered.“Sir,” said Mason, his operations chief, stepping forward. “The legal team wants to know how we’re handling the data breach. Do we issue a denial or admit internal compromise?”“Neither,” Ethan

Second phase The morning after the storm felt too quiet.Sterling Tower stood against a pale gray sky, its glass walls reflecting nothing but cloud. The city had resumed its rhythm — traffic, noise, routine , but inside the building, calm was just a disguise.Ethan knew it. Clara knew it too.The war hadn’t ended; it had only gone silent.Clara leaned over the digital console, eyes scanning the lines of code still recovering from last night’s crash. Her reflection on the screen looked almost ghostlike , pale, sharp, a mix of exhaustion and defiance.Across the room, Ethan was talking to the board. His voice was even, commanding, but Clara could read the tightness in his shoulders. “Sterling is operational again,” he said. “Data integrity has been restored, and external threats neutralized. But until the final audit, no one moves information off the network. No exceptions.”One of the executives raised a brow. “Are you suggesting there’s still an internal threat?”Ethan met his gaze

Synthetic echoesThe next morning, the world broke in silence.No alarms, no warning. Just a quiet digital pulse spreading through Sterling’s internal networks — subtle, invisible, devastating.Clara woke to her communicator flashing red.URGENT: Security Breach — Memory Fragments Detected in Public Channel 3AShe shot upright. The apartment lights flickered, the faint hum of her data console whispering like a heartbeat out of rhythm.Within minutes, she was inside the Sterling control room. Ethan was already there, shirt sleeves rolled, hair slightly disheveled. His eyes caught hers the instant she entered — the tension between them taut, electric.“It’s her memories,” he said, voice gravelly. “Someone leaked archived neural visuals from the Mirror prototype.”Clara froze. “What kind of visuals?”Ethan turned the main display toward her.The screen filled with flickering images — her memories, twisted and spliced.Her in a white lab coat, working late nights.Her laughing with Victor